Carnage everywhere as Lombok locals plead for help

By James Massola, Amilia Rosa & Karuni Rompies

So are the resorts and the diving schools offering tours out to the Gili Islands.

Faded road signs serve as a poignant reminder that the island of Lombok is usually a destination for tourists from Australia and other parts of the world.

Instead, all along the Pemenang Raya road, which sweeps and dips its way around this spectacular, scenic coastline, there is carnage.

Relatives react as rescue teams recover the bodies of victims killed in an earthquake in North Lombok.Credit:AP

Advertisement

Small villages have been wiped out.

Resorts stand empty, abandoned.

Loading

Groups of teenage boys sit on plastic chairs in the middle of the road every few kilometres, waving cardboard placards asking for water, food, money and help.

In one kampung, an angry local has spray painted a message to Indonesia's much-loved: “President Jokowi, look at us”.

In another a furious woman, collecting what was left of her possessions from the ruins of her house, rounded on us.

“What are you doing, just taking photos, you’re not making any donation, you’re not helping me to rebuild. You are of no use”.

Time and again, locals tell us that help from government agencies in the form of food and water has been slow to arrive, or hasn’t arrived at all.

An injured woman lies at a temporary shelter in North Lombok. Credit:AP

The sense of anger and frustration among locals at the patchy government response seems to be growing – especially in some of the harder hit areas in the north of Lombok.

Help is coming, but slowly. Army trucks, police and ambulances whiz past on a regular basis and aid agencies are starting to mobilise.

But with so many destroyed houses, roofs thrown violently to the roadside and walls struck to the ground, the more populated, easy to access areas are receiving help first.

Ismail and his wife Suhaini, from a sub-village in Pemenang of about 40 families, returned to their destroyed house on Tuesday to try and salvage some of their possessions.

“Our house, maybe in three seconds, it was gone and everybody else's in the village too. All gone, flat, ruined!"

"We escaped just with the clothes on our back, we [the villagers] set up camp nearby. Everybody was afraid to go home, this is the first time we came home. I've been wearing the same clothes for three days now. We need a change of clothes.”

Four houses down, an eight-year-old girl had been crushed to death.

Two doors down, eight members of the same family were severely injured.

An hour north up the road, a joint team comprising search and rescue agency Barsanas, the army and the police is still working to find survivors from the Lading-Lading mosque.

Barsanas’ leading officer on the scene, Agung Alit, is blunt: “We can't really say how many were trapped” when the sprawling two storey mosque collapsed.

Two people have come out alive, three bodies have been found and work will continue until the head Imam, Wira Kelana, is found.

A damaged mosque in North Lombok. Credit:AP

“He was last seen by the side door of the mosque. We will continue maybe a day or two till we find him,” Alit says.

The likelihood of him being found alive is diminishing every day.

The full impact of Sunday’s earthquake on Lombok, which lacks the infrastructure and popularity of Bali, is only now becoming apparent.

The death toll is now 105, with 236 people injured and it is expected to rise further because authorities believe people have been hit and killed by buildings including mosques, health clinics and houses which have collapsed.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, BNPB, said at a briefing that most of the dead had been found in North Lombok

The number of people evacuated from the holidays islands of Gili Trawangan, Gili Meno and Gili Air has reached 4636.

Hopefully the eyes of the world remain on Lombok and more help is sent, even as the tourists flee and the locals begin the slow rebuild.

James Massola is south-east Asia correspondent, based in Jakarta. He was previously chief political correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Canberra. He has been a Walkley and Quills finalist on three occasions.